DNA 'tests' of hair supposedly from a Yeti in a Siberian cave show it comes from an unknown mammal closely related to man, it was claimed last night.
The alleged findings were revealed on the official website of a regional government in Russia.
It claimed that two tests were carried out in Russia and one in the US. These had agreed the hair came from a human-like creature which is not a Homo sapien yet is more closely related to man than a monkey, it was reported.
'We had ten samples of hair to study, and have concluded that they belong to mammal, but not a human, and not the animals known to the area where they were found, like a bear, or wolf, or goat, or any other animal,' Professor Valentin Sapunov was quoted as saying.
'It was a branch of our university in St Petersburg that carried out a DNA test, and the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences. The tests were performed by laboratory of electronic microscopy and laboratory of molecular genealogical classification.'